


Falling, Falling as If from Far Up

by MaloryArcher



Series: #ClexaWeek2018 [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Clexa Week 2018, Clexaweek2018, Day One, F/F, New Year's Eve, Romance, meet ugly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 05:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13804815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaloryArcher/pseuds/MaloryArcher
Summary: A story just as much about falling near each other as it is about falling for each other.





	Falling, Falling as If from Far Up

**Author's Note:**

> No promises or anything, but I'm hoping to write something for at least a few of these Clexa Week 2018 prompts.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Clarke is late for her party.

Technically, she’s late for her pre-party.

Even more technically, it isn’t her pre-party. Her name _is_ on the invitations, alongside her best friends— _Jaha-Blake-Griffin NYE Pre-Game Spectacular no. 3_ in gold, glittering letters at the top of black cardstock, the date, time, and Bellamy’s address typed in italics along the bottom—but she’s had almost nothing to do with the planning.

Wells was responsible for decorations and invitations, picking out fonts and color schemes and designing vinyl wall decals. Bellamy cleaned his apartment and rearranged for their guests, and he was in charge of all food-related prep work. The guys had gone in together on entirely too much cheap beer. Clarke’s only real job, aside from allowing them to put her name on the invites and fielding the odd text about post-pre-party plans, is to show up.

Wells and Bellamy know better than to ask anything more of Clarke.

She didn’t want to throw this one at all. She would be perfectly happy to tuck in early, alone, with a bottle of champagne, some takeout, and a few hours of quietly binge watching terrible movies. She has less interest in toasting to the new year than she has in getting drunk enough to briefly forget the last one ever happened.

There’s some old saying, something about starting a year the way you hope to end it, and Clarke doesn’t want to spend another second of this year building up expectations for the next, not when she’s slowly realizing her best laid plans never lead where she wants them to.

But her friends were smart, and they knew her well, and so they sent Bellamy’s little sister Octavia to guilt trip her into at least stopping by the pre-party. Octavia’s only real job was scouting out where the group would head to when the pre-party finally lost its steam. The other girl had flitted by early in the week, barging in to Clarke’s apartment and batting her eyelashes and reminding the blonde that it was tradition for all their friends to get together, that it wouldn’t feel the same without Clarke there.

Octavia also mentioned that Niylah would be there with her girlfriend, and so would Atom and his girlfriend, as well as Roan and his new girlfriend, and that nothing said _I’m over all the exes who have somehow invaded my friend group without being shunned after our breakups_ like showing up at peak hotness and being gracefully mature about their relationships flourishing even when none of Clarke’s have.

So, Clarke is running late for the pre-party that she’s technically throwing and really doesn’t want to attend, and she’s wearing inadvisably stylish high-heeled boots and a tight dress—because she’s happy for her exes, really, and she even considers them all friends, in a Stockholm syndrome-y way, but she’s not above making sure they all remember exactly how hot she still is—and the world is covered in a thin, but intimidating, layer of ice when she rolls up to the liquor store near Bellamy’s place.

The boys may be happy starting off their night with cheap beer, but Clarke figures, if she’s going to look this good, and if she’s going to spend the couple hours before sneaking out to head home early surrounded by her exes-turned-friends, she might as well treat herself to something drinkable.

Clarke is already running late for her party, so she doesn’t spend much time combing through the racks, picking out a pricier than usual bottle of white wine that she doesn’t intend to share, plus a cheap bottle of champagne that she won’t even open until whichever unlucky Lyft driver destined to shuttle her from Bellamy’s back home gets the job done.

She’s striding out of the store, completely lost in her thoughts, the wine in a paper bag clutched tightly with her key ring in her left hand, the champagne in its own bag in her right. She’s ready for the year to end, ready to show her face at the party, ready to sneak home before someone can talk her into going bar-hopping or clubbing or otherwise disrupting her plan to be home long before any ball can drop.

She’s ready, but she’s not paying attention to her surroundings.

There’s a patch of ice right beside Clarke’s car. A patch of ice that, when Clarke first stepped out of her car, made it almost impossible to find steady footing. One that she had to step over carefully, with both hands clutched to her car door.

Now, on her way back to her car, Clarke makes it one step off the curb before both feet are flying out from beneath her, and then she’s falling. She lands hard, her elbows and her ass and her back slamming against frozen concrete. Her head only narrowly misses the lip of the curb.

Her first instinct is to cry. Not because of the pain, but because of the frustration. She didn’t want to leave her apartment in the first place, and the universe is telling her she should’ve followed that instinct. A close second is her instinct to string together a slew of profanities, because, really? _This_ dress and _these_ boots scraping and dragging along the ground? 

Clarke doesn’t cry, though. She doesn't curse, either.

She laughs.

Flat on her back, her dress hitched high on stocking-clad thighs, cold seeping into her skin, she laughs.

Clarke laughs because, even as she flailed and slipped and hit the ground, she managed to save both the wine and the champagne.

“Are you okay?”

Clarke isn’t expecting the voice, hadn’t had time to consider whether someone had seen her embarrass herself or not. When she looks up, there’s a woman staring down at her. She’s dressed more appropriately for the weather, in a long button-down coat, a thick scarf, fitted pants, and snow boots.

When Clarke sees her face, she laughs even harder.

The other woman is beautiful. Like, drop dead gorgeous. She’s all wavy brown hair fanning out over her scarf and pouty lips pursed in concern and when Clarke doesn’t stop laughing, no, she's cackling now, long enough to answer her, she turns to look back to the liquor store and she has this jawline that’s just about unreal.

And, of course, Clarke only comes into contact with a girl this attractive on a night like this, one so romanticized for connecting people in little moments of serendipity, after she’s practically busted her ass on the pavement.

This moment, this bit of embarrassment, is the fitting end to this year.

“I think you might be concussed,” the woman tells her slowly, “I’m going to get some help inside. Just hang on.”

“Wait,” Clarke says, reaching out before she remembers she’s basically thrusting her champagne at this stranger, “I’m not concussed, I swear. I’m just—I saved the wine.”

Clarke smiles and lifts her left hand in victory.

The brunette looks at Clarke like she isn’t convinced that the concussion talk should be tabled so easily.

“I could probably use some help getting up, though,” Clarke admits.

The brunette snaps out of her disbelief and offers both hands, holding them steadily out to Clarke and waiting patiently while she sits them steadily on the ground beside her.

Clarke slips her bare hands into the other woman’s gloved ones and lets the brunette start to slowly pull her up.

“Big wine enthusiast,” the woman asks as Clarke’s back leaves the ground.

She’s barely got one heel under her when she says, “Not really, but it’s a twenty-dollar bottle, and I don’t go all out like this unless—”

Clarke doesn’t get to finish accidentally proving to this beautiful, well-dressed stranger that she still drinks like a broke teenager because, before she can get her other heel underneath her, the other woman takes a half-step too close, right onto the ice patch, and she loses her footing, too.

Clarke doesn’t let go of the woman’s hands in time for her to right herself or catch herself, but she figures she doesn’t have much to be sorry for when she breaks the brunette’s fall.

Clarke’s back slams into the ground again, and the other woman lands heavily on top of her, her warmth almost as shocking as more of the same cold against Clarke’s skin. The other woman’s nose collides with Clarke’s cheek, her chest heaves against Clarke’s, her knees slam against the pavement on either side of Clarke’s.

They both groan, and Clarke resigns herself to the frostbite she’s inevitably going to get, since it looks like she’s never getting up again. She doesn’t think she’ll mind bailing on the party she’s already late for and didn't even want to attend, even if she gets a little frostbite, if it also means being underneath an impossibly beautiful woman.

When the brunette pulls her face back with a grimace, Clarke has an apology on the tip of her tongue, but it dies away when she realizes how green the woman’s eyes are. They stay like that for a long second, looking at each other, and then the brunette looks up, to the spot a foot away where Clarke had placed her bottles.

“Wine’s still safe,” the other woman assures her with a smirk, and then she rolls off of Clarke, so they’re side-by-side on the ground.

“Silver lining,” Clarke laughs, “Are you okay?”

“Not my pride,” she grunts, “but otherwise fine. You?”

“Still not concussed, so, yeah. I think so.”

“Should we try this again?”

“How about you try to get yourself up while I try to get myself up,” Clarke offers.

“Deal.”

The brunette is quicker than Clarke, rolling first onto her stomach, then popping up to her knees in the time it takes Clarke to summon the energy to sit back up. The ground isn’t as cold on her knees now that they’re going tingly and numb.

She wishes she’d worn gloves, maybe pants and a thicker coat, too.

“I don’t know if you can tell, but these shoes aren’t really up to the weather,” Clarke says, when the other woman has scooted back enough, frog style, to be clear of the ice.

She’s pushing up on a knee, almost back to her full height when the brunette laughs again, looks down at her boots, and says, “Despite a ton of reviews, it turns out these aren’t either. And those heels might be lacking in traction, but they look great on you.”

Clarke can’t tell whether that was meant to be a compliment or a come-on, so she just mumbles out a thank you, grabs her keys, heaves herself up onto the curb and tries to use the least-slippery parts of her car to get her shoes firmly underneath her.

“Sorry I brought you down with me,” Clarke says, bare hands clenching the still-warm grill of her car. She’s looking down now, still can’t quite get both toes and both heels to stop sliding in place and doesn’t expect it when the brunette is right beside her.

“Don’t be,” the woman says, and then there’s a hand strong and steady on Clarke’s waist and an arm slung low across her back. “I got you.”

Clarke lets the other woman steady her, until, finally, her feet are firmly on the ground.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Clarke tells her.

“Hardly,” she smiles, “I just figured you’d rather be on your way to wherever you’re headed than stuck down there.”

“I really can’t thank you enough,” Clarke says, “you didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to,” she shrugs, “besides, I had to make sure the twenty-dollar wine bottles were okay.”

Clarke smirks and informs her, “Only one is a twenty-dollar wine bottle. The other is a nine-dollar champagne bottle.”

“Ah,” she smirks, “Only the best. You’re ready to ring in the new year, then?”

“That’s the idea,” Clarke says, realizing her friends must be wondering where she is.

They’re still so close. This stupidly pretty woman is still so close to Clarke, and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

“I won’t keep you,” the woman tells her, “but I will help you into your car, if you’re okay with that. I don’t want to come back out here to find you wiped out again.”

She says it with a smile and Clarke bites her lip.

“I guess I can allow that, even if it feels like you’re making fun of me.”

“If I’m making fun of you, then I must be making fun of myself, too, right? I wiped out so hard that you had to break my fall.”

Clarke can only arch an eyebrow at that logic, and it earns her an even bigger smile.

“Oh, wait,” the woman calls out, and Clarke wonders if maybe she’s going to do something—ask her name, offer her number, _anything_ —but she just explains, “you’re all icy, do you mind,” and then starts brushing icicles off Clarkes jacket when she shakes her head.

“Good as new,” the brunette smiles, and Clarke wishes she had more time to memorize the little crinkles at the corners of her eyes.

The brunette steadies Clarke as she steps down from the curb and just past the car door she opens for her. It isn’t graceful, the way Clarke half-throws herself into her seat, but the woman doesn’t comment on it as she carefully bends down to pick the bottles up for Clarke.

Before she closes the door, when the brunette is still sort of resting her hand on top of it and smiling down at her, Clarke gets a little braver than she has been since she looked up to find this woman towering over her.

“I’m Clarke, by the way. It feels weird not to introduce myself to someone who threw off all her New Year’s Eve plans to help a human turtle off her back.”

Another laugh from the brunette, one that’s airy and short, and then she’s reaching out to shake Clarke’s hand and saying, “Lexa, and finding a rare north American ice turtle in her natural habitat was a lot more exciting than anything I had planned for tonight.”

Their hands touch, and Lexa’s is still gloved and still icy, but the grip of it warms Clarke’s cheeks.

And then Lexa is stepping back, slowly and carefully, withdrawing her hand and offering a, “It was nice meeting you, Clarke, but you should probably turn on your heat before you get frostbite, and I should get in there,” she nods at the liquor store, “before they shut the place down.”

Clarke is probably actually getting frostbite as they speak, but that warmth in her cheeks doesn’t stop when Lexa lets go. It just blooms and spreads and confuses the hell out of Clarke, who has met many hot girls in thirty years and never been so affected by any of them without getting to know them first.

“Good night, Lexa,” Clarke says, because it’s not like she can ask out a strange woman on New Year’s Eve after accidentally bringing that woman to her knees, and not in a fun way.

“Happy New Year, Clarke,” she says, and then she swings the door to a soft close, taps gently on the hood, and then practically tiptoes her way up the curb and into the store.

Clarke knows she doesn’t want to set any outrageous expectations for how she’ll end this year or start the next, but she really wants at least a few more minutes to look into those eyes.

It’s that thought, that weird, inexplicable desire, that has her sitting in her car, heat blasting, still in park when Lexa comes back out with a paper bag-wrapped bottle in one hand.

She pauses when she sees Clarke, almost startles, Clarke thinks, but she looks sort of pleased too.

Clarke rolls down her window, leans out enough to tell her, “I’m not sure when I became an old person, but everything kind of hurts.”

She says it in the lightest way she can, mostly because she isn’t sure where she’s going with it.

“What a coincidence,” Lexa says, “I thought all the time on the ice might help, but my knees are kind of throbbing.”

“You mentioned you didn’t have any exciting plans,” Clarke says, “Is that still true?”

“My calendar hasn’t changed much in the last five minutes, Clarke,” Lexa says, and Clarke’s too hung up on the way her name sounds from Lexa’s lips to roll her eyes at the teasing.

“I’m thinking of canceling on this party I wasn’t really in the mood for, maybe ordering some takeout and nursing my aches on the couch with my wine.”

“Smart woman,” Lexa says, shifting the bottle to her other hand, “I’m probably going to do the same.”

“This might be presumptuous, but would you like to do that in the same place? The takeout and the wine and the casual suffering,” Clarke asks, “Feel free to say no if that’s weird, I mean, it is New Year’s—”

“I’d love to.”

“Really,” Clarke asks, still surprised this woman hasn’t completely shot her down.

“Really.”

“Wow, okay, wow,” Clarke says, “Your place or mine?”

“How about yours,” Lexa offers, “unless you think you can make it up my fairly icy driveway in those shoes.”

“My place it is.”


End file.
